“How d’you know it was?”
“Why, he said so!” exclaimed Tom. “A man ought to know his own name, oughtn’t he?”
“He should—yes.”
“Well!”
“But did he have any way of proving his name to be Carver?”
“Pshaw! the Cap’n never axed him to prove it. Why for should he lie about it? He worked his way to New York and all he got was his grub for it. I let him have an old pilot coat of mine, he having only a thin jacket on him. He agreed to pay me two dollars for it. And he was jest as honest as they make ’em.”
“He paid you?”
“He sartinly did,” said old Tom, wagging his head. “A feller who would be as good as his word in that particular wouldn’t lie about his name, would he?”
“You said you heard from him ten years after?” I asked, without trying to answer Tom’s query.
“Well—yes—it was ten years. But I guess the letter had been lying there in the office of Radnor & Blunt—them’s the folks we dealt with on the Sally Smith—for a long time. I had left the Sally the year after and only just by chance went into the office when I was in New York. The chief clerk he passed me over a letter. In it was a two-dollar bill and a line saying it was for the coat.”